Thursday, January 14, 2016

Our deeply held beliefs about child safety on the
streets of America are largely false. And, what most parents are doing to keep
their children safe is the most dangerous thing they could do.

Last week I wrote about the Smith family of Noblesville,
Indiana, parents who went afoul of police and child services after allowing
their 9-year-old to walk 4 blocks alone to mail a letter to Santa. Though no
immanent threat was apparent, an elderly woman stopped their son along the way and called the police. The police officer that
arrived at the Smith home lectured Mrs. Smith and her son, saying there were
“dangerous people in the neighborhood.”

Their story is not unusual. Across America parents who give
their kids freedom to roam are being treated like negligent fools. Several
social media responses to last week’s blog post lamented, “Well, the world just
isn’t like it was when we were kids.” That widely held, but mistaken belief is
at the core of the problem.

Go looking for proof that kids are in greater danger today
than a generation ago and you simply won’t find it. It doesn’t exist.

Here’s the reality: Crime against children today mirrors
that of 1970. Almost no one seems to know this except the crime statisticians
who gather the data. In the ‘70s and ‘80s such crimes rose, reaching a peak in
1993. Since then, it has declined. So those you hear lamenting, “The world
just isn’t like it was when we were kids,” are mistaken. It’s very much the same
as it was in 1970, when kids were allowed to roam freely in their
neighborhoods.

The Crimes Against Children Research Center reports that
crimes against children continue to fall across the board.

What are the odds of your child being abducted and killed by
a stranger? 1 in 1.5 million. Still, that’s what most parents worry about. So
instead of letting their kids walk to school or move about freely in the
neighborhood, they drive their kids everywhere to ensure their safety. But
guess what the #1 cause of death among children under 14 is? Riding in a car. In fact,
your child is far, far more likely to be hurt in a car accident than by a
stranger while walking to school.

And that fear of random strangers? Truth is, the person most
likely to abduct a child is a family member. And person most likely to molest a
child – someone the child knows well.

Why are our fears so upside down and backwards?

Those 1.5 million kids not killed by a stranger today don’t
get their stories told on the news. Their safe day isn’t interesting. But that
one kid in 1.5 million; his story is told over and over and over again by news
channels with 24 hours to fill. And in our nation's lurid attraction to grief-pornography, we'll watch the parents weep openly on Dr. Phil. Never
mind that 3 children die and nearly 500 are injured everyday in car accidents. Not interesting. Not compelling. Not heart-pounding.

So wanna have a screwed-up view of your kid’s safety? Watch television news, the place where, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

In his book, The Science of Fear, Daniel Gardner detailed
the many ways American parents fear the wrong things, that death statistics
reveal a child is more likely to choke to death on food than to be abducted and
killed by a stranger. So we drive our kids to school, but don’t know the
Heimlich maneuver?

We fear the wrong things! And in doing so, we’re raising a
generation of children who are not learning independence and self-reliance.
They’re not exploring and discovering their world, it’s being spoon fed to them
by irrationally fearful parents.

A day or two after New Years I pulled up to my local coffee
shop, on the very route Jacob Smith took to Santa’s mailbox on the square.
Across the street I saw Jacob’s mother amble down the street with the family’s
old blind dog on a leash. Jacob and his little brother ran along the sidewalk
ahead of their mother. I shouted hello.

The Wall Street Journal: Campouts Test Helicopter Parents.

Inside with my coffee and Wall
Street Journal, the article I found first was about Kindergarten in Germany and
the practice of children being sent on weekend camping trips away from their
parents to explore in the wilderness. In the startling 3rd paragraph
it reads: “While U.S. preschoolers
practice their ABCs, their counterparts in German Kindergarten, age 3 to 6,
head into the outdoors to learn to get dressed, prepare meals and go to bed–all
without their parents.” On these camping trips the children are given
knives and taught to whittle sticks for roasting hot dogs over a fire for
dinner. One group, all non-swimmers, camped on an island.

Could you imagine this in America, were children are treated
like paper-thin, fragile blown glass that might break if jostled, where
hypervigilant parents supervise their every move? Our culture is so awash with
irrational fear no school would ever be allowed to take 4-year-olds into the
forest for a weekend campout.

What German children learn in Kindergarten isn’t in the U.S.
curriculum. They’re taught to be independent, self-reliant individuals. And
childhood in otherwise rigid Germany is pretty relaxed. The WSJ article pointed
out that kids as young as 5 are routinely sent alone by their parents to the
bakery or corner store. And the nation doesn’t start teaching them to read and
write until age 6. To Germans, teaching kids to be resiliant and independent
comes first.

On a trip to Japan last October, I saw children who looked
as young as 6, waiting alone on busy train platforms for their commuter ride to
school, and I noted with interest a square block-sized park filled with perhaps 50 children, swinging, playing ball, clustered in circles talking, and not one single parent anywhere to be seen. My son, who lives there, told me that is normal.

Think Germany and Japan have got it wrong? Google
international test scores and see how American kids stack up against theirs.
Then check life-expectancy and child mortality rates in the these 3 nations
just to put an exclamation point on how far behind America has fallen.

Other western nations are raising kids the way American
parents raised them a generation ago, where kids organized their own pick-up
basketball and baseball games and moved about their neighborhoods each day
without a helicopter parent hovering overhead, intervening and protecting. They
learned to resolve disputes with other kids on the own, be independent, and discover
the world on their own individual terms. Those days are gone in America. Now near-all kids activities are adult-directed and supervised.

You can tie a kid’s shoes for him over and over while he
watches, but he won’t learn to do it until he does it himself. A lot of
child rearing is like that. You simply can’t do the learning for them. They
have to do it themselves or they’ll never learn.Our fears that get in the way of that are emotional, not rational.

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“Meyer turns the pages of history with gentle care and a warm heart, creating a story I’ll remember forever. Thank you Kurt Meyer for opening a door to my beloved town’s past and allowing me to travel the streets and meet the people of Noblesville 1893.”

Thursday, January 7, 2016

The following story is true. The family asked
me not to use their real names.

NOBLESVILLE, INDIANA A week
before this past Christmas, 9-year-old Jacob Smith was excited for Santa’s
visit. In his family’s picturesque Victorian-era home with its deep,
wrap-around porch, hardwood floors and tall ceilings, he wrote a letter to
Santa.

He’d been thinking of Santa’s cottage, set up on
the courthouse lawn just down the street from his home. Santa had a mailbox there
for just such a letter.

Warning: This story will end with Jacob’s parents
being questioned by the police and child protective services. If you’re looking
for a light-hearted Christmas story, this isn't it.

Jacob’s father is an award-winning schoolteacher,
his mother a free-lance marketing specialist. The next morning before school
they agreed to let him walk alone the 4 blocks to the courthouse square to put
his letter in Santa’s mailbox.

Santa's cottage on Noblesville's square. Painted by Rodney Reveal

It’s a ridiculously, unbelievably Normal
Rockwell-ish journey, down a brick street lined with historic architecture
where Jacob often walked the family dog – a loveable, old blind mutt, past the
doors of his family’s friends, even other family members, the route for
Christmas, 4th of July, and Homecoming parades, and then past
the coffee shop, restaurants, and businesses his family visits regularly. He
dropped the letter in Santa’s mailbox and turned for home, deciding to take the
alley that runs from the square east-west behind his house, knowing that
would lead him a few steps closer to the family’s kitchen door.

Halfway home he was stopped by an elderly woman in
a car. She asked what he was doing in the alley in the dark. He told her his
name, his parent’s names, his address, and that he was just a couple blocks
from home. She parked her car and insisted that he stop and walk with her to
his home. Once home, Jacob told his mother about the elderly woman he met in
the alley.

And then a police officer arrived at their door,
asking why Jacob had been allowed to walk to the square before school (the
elderly woman had apparently called the police). Jacob’s mother recalls an
awkward exchange with the female officer who warned Jacob that there were bad
people in the neighborhood. And though no law defines such matters, the officer
got into a discussion with Jacob’s mother about the specifics of what was safe
and not safe in the neighborhood where Jacob’s family had lived for years, but
where the officer didn’t live. Again, no law defines these matters, it was just
the officer telling Jacob’s mom what she thought should be allowed.

“You know since a child is involved, I’ll have a
file a report with the Department of Child Services,” the officer said before
leaving.

Once the officer left, Jacob’s mother explained to him
that his neighborhood was safe and that he would be free to explore it, with
permission, that he shouldn’t stop for adults no matter who they are,
especially when he’s confident in what he is doing, that she and Jacob’s father
weren’t going to by hypervigilant helicopter parents who obsessed over his
every move, that part of growing up is having freedom, making mistakes, and
learning to be independent. She told him not to be afraid, but instead to make
smart choices.

Then the Child Services lady showed up saying she
was there to talk about the “alleged neglect.” This involved a meeting with the
entire family around the dining room table, one that left Jacob, his little
brother, and his parents uncomfortable. They were being judged for behavior
that is not specifically defined anywhere in law, accusations that were leveled
by an anonymous, unnamed elderly stranger whose credentials amounted to, at
most, having a differing opinion from Jacob’s parents about what was safe in
the neighborhood.

Think a moment about this true story. Today,
Jacob’s parents are called “free-range parents.” This kind of parenting was
simply called “parenting” a generation ago. But today, a stranger could stop
your child, redirect your child’s activities, and escort your child somewhere
at their sole direction. And because that stranger simply called the police,
you could find yourself questioned and lectured by not only the police, but by
Child Services on private parenting decisions that have no specific definition
in law. It's just one person in a position of power with a differing opinion
about child rearing.

And consider that now there is a document in a file
and a pdf. in a database that Jacob’s parents were asked to sign showing Child
Services had been called to Jacob’s house. Can you imagine the next time a
hypervigilant adult with ideas about parenting that differ from Jacob’s
parent's ideas decides to call the police because a 9-year-old boy is walking
the family dog on the courthouse square (which Jacob does with his parent’s
permission). The newspaper or TV story would likely have a line that reads,
“This isn’t the first time Child Services has been called to the Smith home.”

If you’re middle aged or older, you
know that the freedom Jacob's parents have given him was no big deal in your
childhood, as your parents likely gave you far more freedom. Had these
standards been in place during my childhood, my parents would have
been in jail.

Is the world really more dangerous today for
children? I'll look at that question next week in the Hoosier Contrarian.

“Kurt Meyer’s The Salvage Man is a gentle Midwestern fantasy made up of one treasure after another. Part historical fiction, part love story, and part rumination on modern day life, this novel asks hard questions about the world we live in and the world we leave behind. I couldn’t put it down.”

“Meyer turns the pages of history with gentle care and a warm heart, creating a story I’ll remember forever. Thank you Kurt Meyer for opening a door to my beloved town’s past and allowing me to travel the streets and meet the people of Noblesville 1893.”

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About Me

The Contrarian's work has appeared in the Noblesville Daily Ledger, The Noblesville Times, NUVO Newsweekly, The Indianapolis Eye (web-based), The Noblesville Current, and at www.dailyyonder.com. He is the co-founder of the literary journal, the Polk Street Review, where his stories also appear. His novel, Stardust was published in 2002 and has just been republished again under the title "Noblesville," by River's Edge Media. His 2nd novel, The Salvage Man, was released August of 2015 by River's Edge. Kurt is a former school teacher and a Realtor.